Ask HN: What is your side project for 2018?

I'm currently working on a sort of mind mapping system at the moment, with the idea that I can use it as a sort of personal database.

I'm using ArangoDB (https://www.arangodb.com/ ↗) to store ideas as collections of nodes, where the properties and details of those ideas (or objects) can be connected to eachother. The properties can be simple descriptions of the node, or documents such as html, pdf, or images.

Im doing this because my memory is terrible (ADHD), and I want to make a system that lets me take notes and record ideas in a way thats more... organic in the way that I think about things. I also tend to use a lot of documentation from the web, and have no way of sorting it other than through bookmarks. Being able to pull webpages off of the internet and reference them within notes is a powerful tool, I have found.

I'm excited for the project for a lot of reasons, but what excites me the most is what I can do once I have this personal database filled out enough. I will essentially have a graph based model of what is typically floating around my head, like a network of thoughts, interconnected by both objective and subjective properties. I aim to use this database to build a sort of personal assistant, personalized for the user.

I think that this is something that we are kind of missing today, where a lot of our interactions come from the internet, this ephemeral space where you can't exactly organize everything that you see and interact with. As an example, imagine that you saw a neat article about cancer research that you wanted to tell someone about later. You send the URL to your database server where it is downloaded, parsed, tagged, and linked to other articles or notes that you may have (this would start out being manual, but I hope to automate it). Once that info is in the database, you can have it recalled through either a direct request for that record, or through implicit actions such as looking for scientific papers in the database and narrowing it down to the one you want.

I have nothing to show for the project so far, it still in it's infancy, but I really think that this is something that will be useful to people, if at the least just myself.

I have 3 big ones.

- Nulis - a tree text editor for writers

https://nulis.io/ ↗

I have built a beta that was very well received, now it's time to clean up the code(rewriting it from scratch), add some cool features, and follow the roadmap to complete v1.0.

- Helix - a habit tracking app

https://helix.startuplab.io ↗

Designed this app mostly for myself, but I think it turned out great, has a lot of potential, and users seem to love it. My goal here is also to complete all the functionality I've set out to complete with my roadmap and reach a solid v1.0.

- Startup Lab - blog

https://startuplab.io/blog ↗

I want to seriously pick up the pace and quality of my blogging. I want to finally develop a sustainable daily writing habit, and make some successful posts.

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If I succeed, I will have two awesome SaaS projects to sell, and a great traction channel(articles + medium publications + reddit) to promote them.

I've estimated that I will need 40k total visitors(or 9 months of 150 daily visitors) to reach my goal of $1k MRR

(40k visitors * ~5% retention * ~10% conversion to paying customers = 200 paying users. 200 users * $5/mo = $1k/mo).

If I successfully accomplish my plan - I will finally achieve my dream and become a successful startup founder.

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As a bonus, I would love to find a good voiceover actor and produce YouTube videos out of my articles(or learn to speak better and do voiceover myself); and I would also experiment with engineering as marketing(I have 3 smaller projects I could promote and use as a traction channel).

I'd like to port the entire authorization module from my open source Python project, Yosai, to Rust and use it as a shared library from Python. I PoC'd this work last January, resulting in the release of my first crate and Rust tutorial. I haven't touched Rust since, though, but intend to push on further.

A complete Rust implementation has the benefit that it can be adapted to myriad other languages and thus has a much wider audience appeal. It's also about 10x faster than cpython, but pypy may eliminate that gap entirely. Of course there are the usual other benefits, as well.

Since Rust is in its infancy for application development, such an authorization library would address a growing need by the Rust ecosystem.

If any programmers want in, email me.

References:

Yosai: https://github.com/YosaiProject ↗

Python-Rust adapter: https://github.com/YosaiProject/yosai_libauthz ↗

authz.rs: https://github.com/Dowwie/rust-authz ↗

blog post: http://daringordon.com/rust_tutorials/ ↗

I just finished my latest Hacker News reader. I usually read HN on my phone, so over the years I've written several wrappers to improve the layout on mobile devices, and also to test out new tech. This version uses Bootstrap 4 for the frontend and ASP.Net MVC Core 2 on the backend, running on a Linux server. http://webbindustries.com/hackernews ↗

For 2018 I'm hoping to make progress on an app I've started, which handles Project Management specifically for software development consultants. The difference from most other PM tools is going to be handling multiple projects for multiple clients, client/role-restricted views, separate-but-linked requirements and task+time tracking, and separate-but-linked budgeting and estimating. I'm designing this primarily for myself, but also so that it can become a SaaS product I can offer as either a hosted service or self-hosted product.

I'm working on a little project I've been tinkering with for the past 9 or so years. Its a club-house of sorts for artists so that they can learn and discuss art.

One of the features is called 'Lightbox' where you can draw overtop a picture and follow steps of a tutorial. Another feature would be to help artists find resources related to your niche with 'LinkKit'.

Right now its very old code and I've been working on a much cleaner update during the past year. So, once its ready I'll do the show 'Show HN' thing for feedback.

Here's a taste of the old code.

Lightbox http://artjutsu.com/lightbox/canvas/Default.aspx?q=3 ↗

LinkKit http://artjutsu.com/beta/linkkit.aspx ↗